When Gregory awoke that morning, he expected to hear his mother bustling in the kitchen fixing breakfast, but he heard nothing. His brother, Edward, was not even turning over in his bed. The clock read 6:33, but the second hand was not moving. Nothing in the house was stirring except for himself and Calibur, Gregory's pet unicorn. Calibur was standing alertly, waiting for Gregory to get out of bed and join him for an adventure.

Remembering that it was his birthday, Gregory hurriedly dressed himself and followed Calibur downstairs. Gregory followed Calibur into the kitchen and ran into his mother who was standing over the stove.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" Gregory apologized.

But his mother did not tell him to slow down and watch what he was doing. She stood motionless at the stove with a spatula in her hand. Even the flame in the burner had stopped moving. Gregory looked at the kitchen clock. It, too, had stopped. The whole world had stopped just for Gregory and his unicorn.

Calibur walked over to the door with that look that told Gregory to open it and let him out. Gregory dutifully opened the door. When Calibur stepped out of the house with a nod back to Gregory, Gregory followed him outside. A heavy fog lay over the back yard. The rising sun was reduced to a pale, distant light. The dew on the grass was so heavy that Gregory's tennis shoes were soaked as soon as he stepped on the lawn. There was no wind.

With the air of knowing what he was doing and why, Calibur lead Gregory to the apple tree that grew by the fence at the end of the back yard. Gregory had climbed it many times, but Calibur hadn't. Gregory had assumed that unicorns don't climb trees, but that morning, Calibur started to climb up the trunk of the apple tree as if it were the easiest thing in the world for a unicorn to do. There was no way Gregory was going to watch his pet unicorn climb a tree and stay where he was on the ground. Calibur had not climbed up very far before Gregory was climbing up the tree right behind Calibur.

Gregory had been up in that tree so often he could have climbed it in his sleep. He knew each branch as well as he knew his own name. Several apples were ripening and Gregory kept trying to stop and pick one of them, but each time he reached for a good-looking apple, Calibur quickened his pace and Gregory had to hurry up the tree to keep up with him.

They soon reached the point where the tree usually swayed under Gregory's weight. Not very much, but just enough to give Gregory that brave feeling that he was doing something dangerous, but not too dangerous. This time, however, the tree did not sway when Gregory expected it to. Calibur perched himself above Gregory on a branch as thick as the lowest one on the tree. Gregory had never seen that branch before. Perhaps the tree had grown during the night, or was growing because time had stopped, Gregory thought to himself. As for Calibur, he rested only for a few seconds before climbing still further up the tree. Gregory quickly followed up into what was unknown territory in the tree he thought he knew so well.

The higher Calibur and Gregory climbed, the thicker the mist became. Gregory began to feel anxious when he could no longer see the ground beneath his feet. When he climbed up another branch behind Calibur, he became more anxious yet when the mist became so thick that he could see neither the branch below him or the branch above him.

"I hope you know what you are doing, Calibur," said Gregory to his unicorn.

Calibur said nothing but he looked as confident as ever when he climbed up into the mist to the next branch. Gregory hurriedly climbed behind Calibur before he got lost altogether. Gregory looked for good-looking apples, but at this height, there were no apples growing on the tree. The leaves, on the other hand, were different. They were tinged with bright gold.

"Are we getting there yet?" Gregory asked Calibur.

Calibur's only answer was to continue the climb still further. Gregory was sure that by this time he had climbed at least five times further than the apple tree was tall. When he reached the next branch, Gregory saw dark shapes looming out of the mist. He might have asked Calibur what they were if all that climbing hadn't taken his breath away.

Gregory wasn't so sure he wanted to get any closer to those dark shapes, but he was very sure he did not want to be left behind by Calibur. So he gripped the closest branch and pulled himself up while Calibur waited patiently. Meanwhile, the dark shapes moved downwards until Gregory could see what they were. He and Calibur were surrounded by ravens. They were taller than Gregory himself. Neither their color nor their size made the birds look friendly. Their long, yellow beaks were just the right size to tear a boys throat, Gregory calculated. He looked at Calibur. Calibur was still his usual placid self. Maybe there was nothing to be afraid of. But when Gregory looked into a raven's eyes, there were no eyes--only blackness. Next thing he knew, Gregory was clinging to Calibur, who stood on his branch as still as a statue.

Gregory tried to think of a polite way to speak to such birds, but he could not think of anything. Saying "Good morning" did not seem quite right if the birds could see nothing good about it. While Gregory tried vainly to think of something to say or do, the raven closest to him raised its right leg and held its talons a few inches away from Gregory's stomach. Gregory could not move back. He would fall off the branch if he did.

"Save me, Calibur!" Gregory cried out.

But Calibur did not move a muscle to help. The shout echoed up and down the tree, but still the raven did not claw out Gregory's insides. By the time the echo had died away, Gregory began to feel ridiculous for crying out the way he did. The raven maintained its odd, threatening position and waited. Calibur finally moved. He nudged Gregory and worked his horn in between the fingers of Gregory's right hand. Then he became as still as the raven and waited. The other ravens also remained as still as stone, apparently willing to wait forever for Gregory to do whatever he was supposed to do.

"How do I greet a raven like this?" Gregory asked.

Calibur and the ravens remained as still as they had been for such a long time. Finally Gregory realized that Calibur had answered the question for him. Once he knew the answer, he didn't want to do it because the raven's talons looked very sharp. But after he had thought about it, Gregory came to the conclusion that he was only a little bit afraid of the raven, the way he was only a little bit afraid when the apple tree swayed under his weight.

So Gregory closed his eyes put out his hand to shake the raven's talon. He winced at the pain he expected to feel, but it didn't hurt after all. Instead, he felt in his hand something soft, indeed, the softest of feathers. Gregory opened his eyes and saw a small gold bird so bright he could hardly look at it. The bird jumped up and flew around the heads of the other ravens, its feathers cutting like sparks through the mist surrounding them. Gregory understood what was still expected of him. He was no longer afraid to shake the talons of the rest of the ravens. He didn't even wait for them to lift up their talons. He reached over to each one, one by one, and shook each talon in turn until all of the ravens had turned into little golden birds. Gregory and Calibur sat contentedly and watched the birds celebrate their transformation by flying in circles until they looked like a display of fireworks. Then each bird swooped down on Gregory and brushed a wing against his cheek, giving him a lovely tingling feeling each time. Once they had all thanked him in this manner, they flew away.

Once the gold birds were gone, Gregory saw golden apples growing on a branch well within reach. This time, Calibur was in no hurry to climb further up the tree, so Gregory picked two apples, one for Calibur and one for himself. He made himself comfortable in the crook of the tree to eat his apple and to feed Calibur out of his hand. The apple tasted like sunshine that had cooled overnight. Gregory felt its moist light all the way down in his body after he swallowed each bite. Now he was glad that Calibur had not let him eat any apples on the way up the tree. It would have spoiled this little birthday feast. When Gregory and Calibur had finished their apples, they started to climb back down the tree.

Calibur lead the way until they reached the part of the tree Gregory had always known. The lower they came, the more the mist dissolved. When the two of them jumped down to the ground, the mist was gone, unveiling a bright sunny day. Gregory looked up at the tree he had just climbed. He was both disappointed and relieved to see the tree looking the way it always had before that morning. Gregory and Calibur walked into the house through the kitchen door. Gregory's mother was moving again at the stove, picking up where she left off in cooking the pancakes. Mother gave Gregory an indulgent look when she saw him.

"I should have known you would be up early on your birthday!" she said.

Gregory smiled. He wanted to tell his mother all about his adventure with Calibur, but he remembered that they had already eaten their golden apples and they had nothing left to prove that they had climbed the tree further than it was tall and come back.